thinkbroadband

Next round of funding for Northamptonshire is not just for rural areas
Wednesday 26 February 2014 11:04:16 by
Andrew Ferguson

The news of how the £250m of 'rural' broadband funding is to be shared out
across the UK and the English local authorities has caused a fair bit of
confusion and with what Northamptonshire appears to be planning the level of
confusion may be increasing.

The Northamptonshire Chronicle covered the news
that the county was getting an extra £3.64m from central Government to push
superfast coverage to 95% of the county, but towards the end of the article the
areas expected to benefit are mentioned "parts of the town centre of
Northampton, Corby, Kettering and Wellingborough, parts of the Northampton
Waterside Enterprise Zone, a number of business parks/industrial estates and
some of the remaining rural and more remote areas in the county."

So far from being a rural broadband fund, it is really just further funding
to continue the gravy train and it is unclear if anything has been learnt by
the DCMS and BDUK. Northamptonshire has had a 100% superfast plan for sometime but the pre-existing BDUK
funding was not going to be enough and it is clear now that the original maps
actually were drawn up with the idea of getting extra funding. Whether the
extra funding will put paid to the secured loan scheme proposed by the County Council is
unknown at this time.

Obviously if the UK wants to be one of the best for broadband in the world,
patching up the holes in coverage in our large towns and cities needs to be
done but the Government needs to be more honest rather than keep trotting out
lines like "An extra £250 million of government money for superfast
broadband will help business start-ups and job creation in some of the UK’s
hardest to reach rural areas"

A bigger question though is what pressure is the Government applying on the
commercial operators to improve speeds and coverage in our cities without any
extra tax payer money?